High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Walter Bradford Cannon, M.D. (October 19, 1871 – October 1, 1945) was an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. He coined the term fight or flight response, and he expanded on Claude Bernard`s concept of homeostasis. He popularized his theories in his book The Wisdom of the Body, first published in 1932.